Abhath Hayat Kibar al-Ulama
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- Editions
- General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta
Abhath Hayat Kibar al-Ulama (Researches of the Council of Senior Scholars) is a seven-volume compilation of legal and theological research papers prepared by the Standing Committee for Scholarly Research and Issuing Fatwas for the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia. The work investigates contemporary novel issues, questions of creed, and classical jurisprudence to support the Council's official deliberations and rulings.
Background and Purpose
Following Royal Decree No. (1/137) in 1391 AH (1971 CE), which formed the Council of Senior Scholars and defined its operating procedures, the Standing Committee for Scholarly Research and Issuing Fatwas was mandated to draft comprehensive research studies on topics placed on the Council's agenda for each scheduled session. Topics were referred to the Committee through the Council’s sessions, royal directives from authorities such as King Faisal, or requests from government ministries, including inquiries regarding engineering developments around religious sites and public welfare regulations. Over decades of periodic sessions, these preparatory papers accumulated into a vast repository of structured Islamic legal studies.
Methodology and Scope
The studies in the collection focus on emerging modern dilemmas as well as complex legal problems across multiple fields, including:
- Rites and Sacred Sites: The validity of performing sa'y on the upper roof level of the Mas'a during pilgrimage congestion, relocating Maqam Ibrahim, and the rules governing sacrificial meats of the pilgrimage.
- Commercial and Civil Law: Penalty clauses in contracts (al-shart al-jaza'i), price fixing (al-tas'ir), codification of preponderant jurisprudential opinions in financial transactions, preemption (shuf'ah) in private easements, and adverse possession or prescription (al-taqadum fi wad' al-yad).
- Medical, Social, and Contemporary Inquiries: Removing and transplanting corneas between humans, setting caps on marriage dowries, triple repudiation uttered in a single phrase, constructing parking garages under mosques, cutting into cemetery grounds for public road expansions, and writing the text of the Qur'an using the Latin alphabet.
Methodologically, each treatise establishes the textual evidence from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, cites opinions of the Companions and later authorities, and surveys the legal positions across the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali). The committee documented excerpts from classical jurists such as Abu Bakr al-Jassas, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, al-Qurtubi, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Hazm, and Muhammad ibn Ali al-Shawkani, while incorporating technical consultations with field specialists and linguists when assessing modern medical or foreign-language topics.
Publication
A number of the individual studies were originally published periodically in the Council's academic quarterly, Majallat al-Buhuth al-Islamiyyah (Journal of Islamic Research), which began publication in 1395 AH (1975 CE). The General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta' subsequently compiled and published the complete collection across seven volumes, overseen by the Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah Al al-Shaykh and prepared through the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars and the General Department for Reviewing Religious Publications.
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